An MVP in 5 weeks with Stena Metall

Background

The Stena Metall Group conducts operations in seven business areas at more than 200 locations in ten countries. They provide society with the raw materials, steel products and marine fuels it needs.

Challenge

The problem space we investigated involved the collection of garbage in cities On collection point there are a number of obstacles or hindrances which can happen. Perhaps a vehicle is in the way or the garbage room; or a code to enter the garbage area may be wrong… a whole manner of possible hiccups. Unfortunately this usually means garbage being left uncollected, and an unhappy person calling customer service. This is a long and frustrating process.

Process

Firstly we gathered together a team to carry out a design sprint around this problem space.

We tested a 4 Day Design Sprint process on this occasion. We were delighted the sprint team members from Stena Metall were full of energy, enthusiasm and had a genuine drive to solve their customers’ problems. Vital for a successful sprint is that each person is dedicated a role. In this particular sprint a clear “decider” was very effective in taking decisions and driving the process forward.

One of the days during this product sprint week is a day where we prototype the new service we have ideated during the previous days. A tough day of prototyping was followed up by a day of user testing on actual potential users of the service. Testing was carried on day 4 of the sprint.

Note to potential product builders:
Try your utmost to make sure you have booked up “testers” several weeks before the sprint, especially if your eventual users are of a specific profile, or in a very unique job role. Often the case in industrial or B2B scenarios.

We tested many things in our prototype, several different scenarios and functions. Our results from user testing helped us prioritise the parts of the service we would later build out into our coded MVP (Minimum Viable Product).

Into Week 3 and 4 of the process our team of developers and designers worked in an agile manner (this included hourly, indeed daily, contact with Stena Metall. This eradicated unnecessary meetings & extended timelines) to finish the MVP.

Week 5. 1000 AM. The client gets to test-drive the service. A mere 3 weeks after clicking a prototype they are using the product in their actual working environment. Now the product is unleashed into the wild, into their own context, can the real iteration and feedback begin!

Result

• A validated Minimum Viable Product (coded) within 5 weeks.
• A roadmap for next-step actions.

We usually have a longer start-up process but this process allowed us to kick-off in a much shorter timeframe! That in itself is great progress.

- Ingbert Engqvist, IT Manager & Digital Business Development

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